Spare tires for vehicles are heavy and bulky objects that, in many vehicles, are accommodated below the vehicle body and are secured against the bottom of the vehicle or against a structure carried by elements of the vehicle chassis. Because of their weight and size, vehicle spare tires can rarely be lowered to the ground, or raised for storage, by hand. For this reason, vehicles with heavier tires are provided with hoisting devices such as winches, by means of which the spare tire is lowered or raised using a steel cable. Upon lowering the spare tire, the cable may reach its fully unwound state. Should the drum continue to be turned in the original sense, the cable would start to wind back on the drum of the hoist in the opposite direction, and the load would be unintentionally raised. It would therefore be advantageous to provide a device that, in the case of a fully unwound cable, would prevent the load from being raised unintentionally. State of the art devices, are relatively complicated to manufacture and comprise many parts. Moreover, the braking action is based on a local tight curve along the cable, eventually causing premature wearing of the cable. Furthermore, in these devices, the brake mechanism is almost entirely located inside the drum, which may lead to functional difficulties.